Meaning, Faith and the Life of Pi

Based on the best-selling novel by Yann Martel, this bold and remarkable film is an adventure set in the realm of magical realism, and centers on an Indian boy named Pi Patel, the son of a prudent and cautious zoo keeper. The film is directed by Ang Lee, who brought us the breathtaking romantic swordplay in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"—which won 10 Oscar nominations, becoming the first Asian film and only the seventh foreign-language offering to ever get a nod for Best Picture.

In the story, which starts with the obligatory cute prologue about an precocious boy, the family decides to move from India to Canada, bringing many of the animals with them. When the freighter carrying the family hits a storm, the stage is set for the main act – Pi is left adrift on a 26-foot lifeboat, lost in the Pacific Ocean, in the company of a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan and a 450-pound Bengal tiger named Richard Parker—all vying in a grim competition for survival. It should be noted that this project has long been considered unfilmable due to the concept, as a long line of directors (including M. Night Shyamalan) were attached to the project and every single one… jumped ship.

In terms of production challenges and a tightly constrained budget, Ang Lee was forced to wrestle with a tiger of his own. Shooting on water can literally drown a production in problems, delays and cost overruns—just look at the tribulations of Kevin Costner, who flopped with Waterworld after burning through a $175 million budget. To pull off the film’s extensive aquatic sequences, the filmmakers had to build the world's largest self-generating wave tank.

Now, here’s the masterstroke of innovation – Lee decided to embrace 3D, even after a relatively fruitless foray into special effects with The Hulk franchise. Here’s why it was a spectacularly gutsy move to rely so heavily on computer graphics—3D has always lent a subtle artificial quality to imagery that prevents the suspension of disbelief. In the computer animation business, the most pronounced form of this effect is called the “Uncanny Valley”. (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley) It’s a hypothesis by Japanese robotics professor Masahiro Mori, who proposed that when human replicas look and act almost, but not quite perfectly, like actual human beings, it causes an enteric response of revulsion – the "valley" refers to a dip in a graph of the comfort level of human observers.

However, the success of CG in films like “Rise of Planet of the Apes” must have encouraged Lee to bet that the technology would be ripe for animating subtle emotional reactions in animals. That bet paid off. Not only were the orangutan and tiger exquisitely portrayed in terms of facial emotions, like an orangutan pensively looking over the sea thinking about a lost child… The filmmakers even did motion capture on four real-life tigers who were on set! Also, 3D is ideally suited for rendering a hypnotically beautiful roiling sea. As a result, the film dramatically renders the distance between Pi and the tiger, the restricted space of the lifeboat, and the overwhelming endless horizons of the ocean all around them. For this reason, this rare film adaptation is actually more entertaining than the book. However, Lee never tries to show off with those digital effects; he controls them with a firm hand, forcing them to serve the telling of the story unobtrusively. Incidentally, I’ve sailed, and no film has better captured the suffocating, claustrophobic feeling of a storm or the perfection of a graceful night sailing through a warm and welcoming sea.

The director treats us to some truly magical images filled with majestic whales and the reflection of a tapestry of stars over a calm and peaceful sea. This is computer graphics taken to the level of visual poetry, a demonstration of what the medium can do if you let your imagination run free, that goes far past Avatar and Hugo… this film is an artistic triumph that rivals masterpieces like Kurosawa’s Dreams and Bertolucci’s Stealing Beauty in terms of cinematic genius.

Just as the exquisite beauty of the ocean is revealed just beneath the drama unfolding on the lifeboat, the true meaning of the film lies gently beneath the surface of the story. The story is so moving that even President Barack Obama, in a letter to the author, described it as "an elegant proof of God, and the power of storytelling".

To understand the jewel of wisdom buried deep within the story – which is pronounced to be “a story that will make you believe in God” – we need to understand that the story is actually about wrestling not with a physical tiger, but metaphoric one... with questions of meaning and faith. This story is a gedanken experiment for the worst case scenario, a modern day story of Job, all about how you can find spirituality and the meaning of life in the throes of all that is horrible and terrible in the world today. It is by surviving and making sense of all that goes wrong in the world, that uncovers the meaning of man.

The moral of the story is pretty clear, and revealed at the end when Pi is forced to tell alternate version of the story to Japanese investigators… with a sailor with a broken leg, a French cook, Pi, and Pi’s mother. Eventually, we realize that the zebra is the sailor, the hyena is the cook, and the orangutan is Pi’s mother, and the tiger, Richard Parker, is actually Pi. The details of cannibalism and savagery are gruesome. Finally, Pi simply asks the author, “Which story do you prefer?”

Clearly, Pi preferred the better story, a massive extrapolation of positive thought, that leads him to make sense of things, that carries him to a new life with a loving wife and family. The other story, where humans are reduced primal terror, could lead only to a brutally shattered life. In this story, you could see the entire story as an abandonment by God… but at the same time, it becomes evident that God was actually present at every moment. And in the end, he realizes that Richard Parker is actually his savior.

Richard Parker’s real name – lost due to a clerical error – is “Thirsty”, and where else, beside lost in a life raft in the middle of the ocean, can you be surrounded by water and still die of thirst? In the same way, God is actually all around us, and still, so many of us are unable to receive the manna of heaven. In Hindu culture, water symbolizes the 'ocean of life,' with all living creatures existing as one contiguous body. The sea torments Pi with waves, threatens him with sharks, and even robs him of his family. At the same time, the sea also gives him life. It rains flying fish upon him, it grows a magical garden of algae, and in the end, bestows the gift of wisdom. Even Pi’s proper name, Piscine, is after a swimming pool - an object built to hold water, the water of spirit and God.

The characters in The Life of Pi – like in any dream, since film is essentially collective dreaming – are all actually components of the self. At a higher level, the Tiger is Pi’s primal self, the orangutan represents universal love – as demonstrated by a protective mother, the brutal hyena is the malevolent cook who is the shadow, and the timid zebra is a young sailor with a broken leg, which represents the innocence of youth and the first to die. All are essential for becoming who we are.

However, the most important component of self is the raft… which represents his faith. It is something that he has to construct by himself, in order to be effective. The through line – ie, the spine of this remarkable tale – is that it is his raft that never forsakes him. More than any other part of the the tale, it is the invisible force that finally brings him to safety and the force that transforms him into the individual he finally becomes. Our challenges are what help to define us; what guides us to becoming more. What greater challenge can there be than trapped with a ferocious tiger? More so, if that tiger is your own fear, anxiety, depression, desolation, and despair. It is our faith that helps us cross the cruel and endless sea. This is a message for all entrepreneurs and innovators as well, never give up your faith – faith in yourself, faith in your vision, faith in a better world.

In the final analysis, just as pi is a mathematical construct that can never be fully comprehended, The Life of Pi is essentially unfathomable… as is the battle between religion, science and spirituality. However, just as Pi finds peace within, “Solitude began. I turned to god. I survived” – perhaps the final message of the film is one that simply urges us to find peace within as well.

I think your suggestion that the story suggests the existence of a god is fanciful. I think it does the opposite...as Pi's father said 'religion is dark, do not believe it'. It is a story of survival and perseverance and the notion that god intervened in some way does not add anything to it...in fact it detracts from the cruel reality if one assumes a god assisted his survival.

One aspect of this story that I have been very surprised not to see commented on – especially here in ‘Psychology Today’ is the extreme emotional trauma experienced by a 16 year old boy. The first thought I had when Pi revealed his ‘alternate story’ was that this trauma was so great that his brain created the animal story in order to survive – much like memory loss serves those who have been abused. The biggest question I have is whether Pi actually went ‘nuts’, believed there was a tiger in the boat, and lived on a small raft away from the lifeboat because of this mental apparition, or whether it was a story that came to him through the ordeal. The former is intriguing, because it would trace the gradual healing of his brain to accept the tiger as part of himself. An unlikely aspect is that he would so easily relate the true story on the hospital bed, but the disappearance of the tiger (and 227 days to work it out) may indicate that his sanity had returned. I would think that only from that point on, he would begin to explore and embrace the religious meanings that are so discussed in the blogs.

Kimkayak...I agree..its hard to imagine how a 16 year old from an closenit family could cope without extreme emotional stress...perhaps the way he recounted the story to the journalist showed some pretty severe post traumatic stress.
The other more obvious themes in the story like the harsh and unforgiving nature of the world contrasted with beauty and calmness...the storms, the brutality of nature in the hyena and the Zebra/orangotang incidents, the way the tiger would have just as soon eaten him as not contrasted with the beautiful scenes of fish, sky, calm seas etc and his guilt at killing a fish to feed the tiger.
The way in which humans tend to romanticise relationships with animals was also interesting...the assumption that he and the tiger grew close when in fact the tiger was only interested in its own survival and would have killed him with impunity whereas he cared for it and expected some gratitude...with hindsight his survival would have been more secure if he had let the tiger die..but then there'd be no story! Of course the alternate story showed human behaviour to be very similar to brutal self interested animal behaviour under extreme conditions ...survival of the fittest ...he felt guilty about killing the fish..how did he feel about killing the person who killed his mother...
I am also fascinated by the religious themes... the point made by anonymous that a main theme is that his belief in god was a choice that in his case saved him? I'm not sure about that...its possible that belief in a god led him to make choices that may have helped or hindered his chance of survival... I didn't see any evidence that his somewhat uncertain belief in a god saved him? It certainly didn't help the others on the ship! As someone who is not religious at all, I think that relying on an imaginary god for protection is self deception which may have positive or negative outcomes either of which would ultimately be rationalised as being the will of the god. Because he survived he may have been inclined to attribute it to a god.. also to overcome guilt feelings of having murdered someone?

I didn't expect to learn a lesson from Life of Pi but I did. First of all, it is fictional and, therefore, not meant relevant as a psychological case study. Secondly, it helped me understand so much of what I see and experience at work, home, church, and with life in general.

No one is exempt from the competition we call life. People who don’t believe in God compete without restrictions. Many Christians deceptively compete with some restrictions. For those of us struggling to overcome our sinful nature, and striving to live a life worthy to be called a Christian, we have discovered another way to compete. As a Christian, I have learned the power of waiting on the Lord. Over and over again, I have seen him work and move in a manner that was so much better than I could have ever thought to do myself. But seeing God work, always means taming my fleshly need to look out for my own best interests.

So, what does this have to do with Life of Pi? In the story where Pi is in the boat with other people, we see what happens when he relies on his own instincts and judgment. It is the painful, disturbing and ever present human reality we prefer not to face. Pi had to tame his basic instinct (the Tiger) in order to fully trust in God. The first story of survival with the Bengal Tiger is the story we prefer but it is also the story that is only possible through faith in God. Interesting to see this played out in a movie.

I struggle to see what faith provides to assist in survival other than possibly a delusion of life after death ala the suicide bomber who is apparently happy to die in anticipation of virgins etc. To me 'faith' is pretending you know something that you do not know so in a genuine survival situation I would prefer to face reality head on and deal with it rather than pretend that it is something else. If one believes a god is involved somehow, giving up or fighting to survive might both be rationalised as gods will....so how could you choose?
It is definitely a thought provking story.

I struggle to see what faith provides to assist in survival other than possibly a delusion of life after death ala the suicide bomber who is apparently happy to die in anticipation of virgins etc. To me 'faith' is pretending you know something that you do not know so in a genuine survival situation I would prefer to face reality head on and deal with it rather than pretend that it is something else. If one believes a god is involved somehow, giving up or fighting to survive might both be rationalised as gods will....so how could you choose?
It is definitely a thought provking story.

Yes, thought provoking - like all good art! I almost don't want to know what Yann Martel really was thinking (no, that's a lie!) But it's intriguing how everyone brings a different aspect of interpretation based on their own experience, philosophy, and interest.
So, back to the plot, the part I struggle most with is that fanciful island - it threw me when I read the book too, where did this thing come from? If you pull the mental-coping thread of explanation, I can see it symbolizing Pi's realization that he's got to deal with this fantasy that his mind's created. (Did he really find a small island, and decide to leave? Who knows.) Metaphorically though, during the day, it works for him to be separate from the tiger, but during the night his brain is realizing that it's not healthy or sustainable. So he goes back and finishes taming Richard Parker (i.e. faces his act of killing the cook), and sets him free (accepts himself) once he finally lands in Mexico.
Or was Mr. Martel just having a little fun? :)

Pi found the island and ate from it. I think this was Pi resorting to cannabalism and eating human flesh. The island was shaped like a person (the god Vishnu? or his own mother?). Did the meercats represent religious followers or maggots on a rotting corpse?). Bi eating flesh Pi regained his strength, and only when he came across a human tooth he came to his senses and continued his journey to land.

Predictably here, one comes across the ready assumption that "a choice not to follow god" leads to the mundane brutality of Pi's alternate story.
In fact, as an atheist, I find more beauty, romance and meaning in the world than I ever did as a believer in Iron Age gods. Every precious day brings new delight and insight into Nature's realities - along with horror at Nature's indifference to our suffering. The Magic Realism of this book/film elevates these experiences but in no way assumes that Faith is the only course.
Indeed Pi hints that Faith - and the Tiger story - are preferable because people prefer comforting myths and falsehoods to the truth.
I struggled to locate the promised "Proof of God" here. Perhaps someone can explain what it was?

Pi went from a kind, thoughtful, loving child who felt unfulfilled because his belief in god was shaken by his father to an equally kind, thoughtful, loving man who believes in god and god is good. What did god do or allow to achieve this?
Drown his entire family
Drown the entire crew
Cause immense anguish, sadness and possibly a lifetime of despair for the relatives and friends of Pi's family
Cause immense anguish, sadness and possibly a lifetime of despair for the wives, children, relatives and friends of the crew
Deny the existence of any children his brother or members of the crew may have had in the future
Kill almost every animal on the ship
Starve, torture and allow Pi to fully believe he's about to die alone

In my opinion, belief in god is mostly due to fear and a lack of awareness about the benefits of not believing in him. When I realized this is probably my only chance at life, it's already started and we've only got each other, my motivation to help others, stop injustice, volunteer with abused children (as I was along with my mother and sisters), recognize how lucky I am to exist and remember what's wonderful here and now drastically increased. By accepting my natural limitations and continuously striving to create a life and community I'm proud of, my quality of life and impact on this world has been far more significant. My daily goal isn't to feel happy and safe, it's to accomplish the steps necessary to be proud.

Perhaps when you're breaking bread with kindred spirits seeking to make this world a better place, working with abused children, stopping injustice, helping others...maybe-just maybe-you've come in touch with the divine.

Geoff
I agree with you. I'm also an atheist and finished the book after seeing the movie... I think people are misreading it somewhat and repeating what some careless reviews have suggested. I don't read any 'proof of god' ...on the contrary I read it to say that god is imaginary and your imagination may help you and others to deal with traumatic thoughts that you can rationalise as being gods will. To have killed /eaten others etc is extreme behaviour that was pro survival but difficult to explain to others..to admit it outright would risk being treated as a monster by others, particularly religious people, who could not comprehend the reality of what happened. By creating doubt with the tiger story he gives others the chance to rationalise what happened in their own minds and not judge himm too harshly ie to involve the idea of god helps him explain it to those who believe in a god. I think he wishes a belief in god would help him come to terms with it but it doesn't...'the photos showed him smiling but his eyes told a different story!'

when pi is young and in the church he asks the priest "why God could do that to his son" the priest replys because he loves him- the trials and tribulations pi goes through while with the tiger - in the end it is the tiger(God ) who he loves and relates to-

Tiger is his inner faith or God as he sees and three animals are three religions he tried to practice… but as time passes he saw religion died one by one when it comes to survival. It’s his battle between the reality (pi) and faith (tiger) when nothing else exists around.

He builds his own faith/god for survival and kept challenging it (from the raft). But once he is back with humans his own faith went away and he is back to religions created by human.

So the god is nothing but your faith which scare/test/help you to survive.

Tiger is his inner faith or God as he sees and three animals are three religions he tried to practice… but when it’s a test of once survival, no religion could help him and died one by one. It’s his battle between the reality (pi) and faith (tiger) when nothing else exists around.

He builds his own faith/god for survival and kept challenging it by keeping it at a distance (from the raft). But when he is back with people, he knew there is not point about telling them that the god as he believes exist and no religion covers it in completeness. So he allowed tiger to go away and build the stories for blind followers of religion.

I think what author mean by finding the god is “God is nothing but your faith which scare/test/help you to survive”.

Put me in the camp of those who see Pi choosing allegory over reality in order to allow his life and sanity to go on in a positive way. If you choose god, and allegory, you can continue to have faith in humanity, yours and everyone else's (or, like those of us who can't choose faith because our brains don't work that way, you sometimes weep at the news). In this case, Pi, becoming the Tiger, survived. He struggled with his vicious animal nature. He didn't like it and was scared of it until he learned to accept it and respect it in an uneasy truce. When he no longer needed his animal nature, it left him. The real story, i.e., the second one, was just too awful for him to live with. So he created the allegory. But the adult Pi is a sad man despite having the trappings of a happy life. That is obvious in the end. Yes, you do see sadness in his eyes.

Yes, the orangutan was Pi's mother. She lost a son. It is acknowledged by Pi, who understands he must lead this expedition to survive. His mother is too overcome by grief. The cook is too wicked. The sailor is too weak.

I feel that apart from the obvious connotations of faith, religion,nature and survival,there is a deeper,metaphorical meaning.
The young boy, adrift in the ocean, with no human company, is afraid of death.This fear is maifested in the form of the tiger.He"tames" the tiger, or overcomes his fear of death.
This is what helps him to survive....

Pi shows us that if you believe we are never forsaken. To believe that we are each and everyone of us is unique and loved by Him. We receive the benefit of having a loving father which gives us the ability to survive anything that life throws at us. We have the Spirit within us to guide us in the right direction. We must acknowledge that there is something larger than ourselves. We need to be loved and able to love. We all have The Spirit within us if we believe that simple fact. It is necessary to suffer in order to become human.
e.g. Jesus crucified is the illustration of that fact.

I think Anonymous is trying to interpret the story in such a way as to reinforce his/her own religious delusions. Far from showing the love of an imaginary supernatural god, the story shows the reality of life and the extreme brutality and harshness thereof. Where was 'He' as far as parents of Pi were concerned, or the others on the ship etc.
Maybe belief in an imaginary deity helps some people to cope with a crisis, (much like a placebo) but most of the time such a belief merely gives people false hope and leads them to decisions that are not pro survival because they think someone is looking after them.

i read this book as a non-fiction work and consequently it had a very strong effect on me, and as they say first impressions last forever...

i was struck by the gift of prose that martel commands so deftly, and to this day i wonder if such a person can actually exist, that can combine three religions in their heart and lead their lives as such. in the ingenuity of and extreme detail that the book delves into for the survival of the journey, i found the most fascinating transformations occurred when pi was forced to fend for himself. when he first killed the fish, when he first stepped off the island, when he tried to train richard parker... these moments became jewels and i would treasure the image that they planted in my mind, future templates to use while writing... it is an art form of a high degree to express such meanings without and within your texts. it is a philosophically inclined book above all else, and i urge the readers to hold faith no matter the cause of disappointment

The name of the ship [and lifeboat] was Tsimtsum. Tsimtsum is a concept that God withdrew Himself from a space, so that in it we creation can exist, and not be nullified by his existence. In this place we live and have our being. Yet God is Present but His light veiled, so that we can have some freedom, some decisions, exist, navigate this realm. Yet in this space God is Present even though veiled for our gift of this realm and its purpose. This is Tsimtsum.

Pi = Jesus seems to go in contrast to the story. His main ambition was "to love God", and in pursuing this sought out the 3 religions. I think he found his love, and that's what sustained him thru the tragedy and beyond, but through his own personal journey, not necessarily via any one religion.
One could make much of the symbolism. The hyena = evil in mankind; the zebra = the suffering; the orangutan = mother nature, and so on.
John Prine wrote...."plant a little garden, eat a lot of peaches, try and find Jesus on your own". ........he may have wanted to use God instead of Jesus, but lacked a decent rhyming food :)

Was hoping for less religious rhetoric and more comments on the psychology involved in Pi's story. For instance, no one commented on the fact that he and his family were vegetarians and how traumatic the idea of killing, and eating meat or fish was for him. It seemed that the raft was a metaphor for a safe place he needed to dissociate to in order to accommodate Richard Parkers appetites.

Here is the deal. Both stories are true -- they both end up in the same place as Pi states. The question posed about preference at the end doesn't speak to what you believe is true (unlike what most commenters say), but to how you perceive the truths around you.

The book does a better job at depicting this during the interview sequence, where Pi insists the first version of the story is true. For him it its, spirituality is the primary lens through which he views the world. It is truth. It was the only way he was able to tame the primal instincts (e.g. the tiger), it is the only reason he left the safe harbor of the floating island, it is the reason he survived and was shaped into the person he is today.

Linking to trauma and psychological ways of dealing with that miss the central idea of the story, but it is unfortunate result of the vehicle that the narrator chooses to make a point.

I really liked this movie and I am in no way a religious person, but I believed the first version of the story, he told the second story because they did not believe the first one. Why does everything have to be metaphorical or allegorical. People come up with these theories instead of just realizing that the story was meant as it was told. There was a theory that Gilligan's Island was actually hell, and Gilligan represents satan and the rest of the castaways the seven sins. So it seems you can take any story and make it into a religious metaphor.